Timeless shapes solution for Renault Mégane's ducting system
Earlier this summer, Timeless were tasked with fabricating a piece of flat-sided aluminium oval tube (87mm x 38mm x 1.6mm) for a brake-cooling kit for Renault Mégane 3RS sports cars. This piece of tube – essentially used as a ducting system – was crucial to the viability of the project.
Part of an RS-R front splitter system designed by UK motorsport specialists, APMotorsport, the oval-shaped piece helps to direct air into the brake system to keep the front brakes cooler during competition use. Air brought in through the ducts are channelled through the flat-sided oval ducting where it’s then fed through the special aluminium adaptor assembly.
The entire build process has taken nearly 18 months to complete, including a lot of adapting, fine-tuning and testing. But the team at APMotorsport were struggling to make the flat-sided oval adaptor, which was threatening to delay the process.
“Quite often we create flat-sided oval tube for automotive parts because it is flatter than standard round tube or our oval tube, and if it needs to be mounted to another tube or component, the parts don’t ‘rock’ against each other so much” says Tom McMillan, MD of Timeless Tube. “Its slim profile is really useful as it helps to provide much-needed clearance around other components and chassis parts. In the case of the Mégane, the tubing was situated behind the wheel”.
For the first prototypes, AP Motorsport managed to flatten a piece of tube by squeezing it in a vice, but this design was crude and inconsistent, and not easy to replicate for the kits it was required for. But even Timeless had to experiment to make the tubing.
“The piece needed to fit onto a 70mm diameter plastic tube, so it required us to make a new sized tubing. It took us a while to ensure the piece would fit. But we got there, and our client is now able to bring this exciting produce to market. As an engineer, I love the thought that has to go into performance cars…every design detail has a purpose. It was so gratifying to be able to fabricate one of these parts” added McMillan.
The trigonometry of the entire splitter and air ducts makes the design of the kit unique, with AP Motorsport claiming there is nothing else like it on the market. It provides users with far greater pedal feel, cooler caliper and brake disc temperatures as well as endurance and longevity of braking components.
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